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Comment Re:I've heard this one before (Score 1) 134

Well, I guess your mileage may vary. But I don't find tracking down memory errors fun. Or type errors, for that matter, but memory errors are worse, IMO. If you like tracking down memory and/or type errors, then I guess you'd find a memory unsafe and/or type unsafe language fun. But if I'm programming for fun, I use a memory safe and type safe language, because that lets me avoid what I don't find fun, so I can spend my time on what I do find fun.

Comment Re:The hype (Score 1) 157

Googling works best if you know the proper term for the thing you're looking for. LLMs can help you find something if you can explain it, but don't know the proper term for it. Sure, sometimes it gives you nonsense. You have to check the answer. But it's still useful, so long as you know its flaws.

Comment Re:Humans getting inspiration vs AI getting inspir (Score 1) 121

Copyright wasn't originally about providing income to artists, though, nor was it about generating popular entertainment. The first modern copyright law, the Statute of Anne was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning...", and the USA constitution copyright clause is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts ...". I don't think further copyright restrictions should be imposed in order to secure income for artists, or secure the generation of popular entertainment. I'm not even sure the USA government has a right to do that, without a constitutional amendment (not that I think it makes a difference). I think we should be asking would further copyright restrictions encourage learning, or promote the progress of science and useful arts. And, if so, would that be worth the additional restrictions on freedom?

Comment Re:Rust is rubbish?? (Score 2) 31

I can see why you'd think that, but, apparently, for many use cases, trees are all you need. Rust has been rated "most loved" programming language in the Stack Overflow developer survey for 8 years in a row, where "most loved" is defined as the language with the highest proportion of current users who want to continue using it, I think. So it seems that people find the benefit of memory safety without garbage collection to be worth the cost of only using trees.

Comment Re:Rust is rubbish?? (Score 2) 31

I'm pretty sure that's not true. Admittedly I don't know Rust, but from what I've read, it does support mutable tree structures. In fact, if I understand correctly, its memory safety is basically all about mutable tree structures. I think its limitation is essentially that it only supports tree structures. So you can't have doubly-linked lists, or directed acyclic graphs (other than trees), or things like that.

Comment Re:Plagerization and nfringementHasn't Worked So F (Score 1) 61

Building on other people's ideas has absolutely helped us in general. For a start, we're able to communicate because we copy the vocabulary and grammar others use. But pretty much every field of human endeavor has benefited from progressive improvement based on earlier ideas: medicine, construction, transport, information technology, you name it. Copying from other people is so important, that many countries require children to attend around a decade of compulsory education, much of which is spent learning other people's ideas.

And it has helped in this particular case. It's lead to around a 9% increase over the previous best. And I'd be extremely surprised if that itself wasn't based on earlier work.

Comment 'Hallucinating' vs lying (Score 2) 100

"One of the issues with the existing ChatGPT is what they call in the field 'hallucinating' â" I call it lying,"

I'm not sure this is fair. Lying is knowingly making a false statement, and I'm not sure GPT3/4 knows it's making false statements. I'd hazard a guess that, since GPT3/4 doesn't experience the world directly, it may suppose that "evidence", like language, is a social construction.

Comment Re: Any copyright term longer than 5 years is a cr (Score 1) 198

The only serious attempt I'm aware of to calculate the economically optimal copyright term is Pollock (2009) "Forever minus a day? Calculating the optimal copyright term." It estimates 15 years. This starts with the assumption, though, that we should use the current copyright system and only change the term. I agree with you that having big media companies copyright derivatives of other people's work isn't ideal. I'm not even convinced that people have a moral right to copyright on their own work, so I certainly don't think people or companies have a moral right to copyright on derivatives of other people's work. I'd prefer a relatively short copyright term, and a longer copyleft term.

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